Thursday, June 12, 2008

.little girl you're in the middle of the ride.

Children are strange. I just walked by a group of three boys who were apparently playing Cops - two of them had their hands against a truck with their legs spread while the other patted them down.

Anyway...

Again, it has been awhile since I have updated. I am terrible at remembering to blog, lately. I remember the good ol' days of Livejournal when I knew a ton of people on there and it was a little more interesting to blog. I felt I had an audience and obviously I need one of those. I suppose that's sort of the point.

I have been going over something in my mind lately - a weird discovery about myself and something I should remedy soon. I know that most people would think that an introvert - especially one as socially anxious as myself - would contemplate something a great deal before sputtering out so much as a "hello," much less a whole sentence. While often, I do tend to censor myself or think (read: worry) before I speak, it is not always the case. Especially when I have had a somewhat "extroverted" day - or as social a day as I ever really have - and it has gone well. If I've spent a good chunk of the day having decent conversations with people, I tend to get a little energized (I think it's adrenaline, and I always crash and feel exhausted later). Then I find myself moronically chiming in on conversations or, when confronted with a question, rattling off some answer that later I fret over. This sounds like me getting better socially, but actually, it's always a prelude to a depression and me feeling like an idiot. Once I come down off said adrenaline high, I realize (or perceive) that I have made a social faux pas and I dwell. This often leads to me isolating myself a little more. It's a really ridiculous cycle that I need to stop.

Case in point: recently, at the library, a fellow shelver who often poses hypotheticals asked me, "If you found out you were going to be abducted by aliens and you could bring three people with you, who would you bring?" Without much thought, I answered as if I had just been asked that age-old desert island question and just chose people I thought would be interesting to talk to (though I couldn't decide on a third). Basically, I answered with the notion that I was gonna be hanging out with aliens at an intergalactic cocktail party or something.

Later, after I'd left the library and headed home, I actually gave it more thought and I realized how terribly wrong my answer could be taken. Afterall, don't alien abductions (according to alleged victims of such things) often consist or anal probes or forced mating? Did I just say I wanted Joss Whedon to get anally raped by an alien probe or that I wanted to mate with Woody Allen? Because if so, I would definitely have to revise my answer!

So anyway, I've been fretting for awhile now about what the aforementioned co-worker must think of me and it's all because I spoke without really thinking. Do any other socially phobic people out there have this issue?

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, sometimes I say something and later I think no, that was stupid, I should have said something else.

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